Introduction

I have a small reproduction of an old
map made by Ferna~o Vaz Dourado in 1576. This map reproduces the southeastern
coastal areas of Africa, from southern Namibia to the easternmost tip of
Somalia. It contains 9 reproductions of flags over those "city drawings"
so common in the maps of that time. I GIFfed the flags to the best of my
eye resolution (the reproduction is small and some details are not obvious),
and I'll post them today and tomorrow. I named the flags with the abbreviation
of the contemporary state that occupies the respective territory. When
there is more than one flag in a particular country, I added n for north,
s for south and w for west. Even so, some places are dubious. The filenames
and descriptions are:

so-1576 - Placed
in southern Somalia, near the place where
today lies Mogadiscio. A triangular flag, dark red over dark yellow, with
a white crescent at the hoist, vertically centered.

ke-1576 - Placed
in Kenya. A deep swallowtail, dark blue, with
a thin dark yellow "Scandinavian" cross. There may be something in the
canton, but I'm not sure.

tz-1576n - Placed
in northern Tanzania. A triangular flag,
very dark red (nearly maroon), with a white crescent at the hoist.

tz-1576s - Placed
in central Tanzania, in front of the islands
of Zanzibar, Pemba and Mafia (may be Dar-es-Salaam). Another deep swallowtail,
divided yellow over red, with two white crescents at the hoist, centered
vertically in each stripe.

mz-1576n - Placed
in northern Mozambique. The flag is square,
yellow bordered in red, with five blue bezants disposed in saltire in the
yellow square. This is evidently a portuguese flag, but one I never saw
before.

mz-1576s - Placed
in southern Mozambique. Another square flag,
yellow bordered in blue, with a red templar cross in the yellow square.
Another unknown to me Portuguese flag.

km-1576 - Placed in the Comoros
archipelago and is yet another version of the Portuguese maritime trade
flags, a yellow field with five red bezants disposed per saltire, that
is, za-1576w and mz-1576n without the red border and with the bezants red
instead of blue:

Are these flags really the flags
used by those places at the time? Or, rephrasing the question: are these
maps reliable in what concerns flag-info (they are not in what concerns
geo-info, that's for sure)Jorge Candeias, 04 Apr 1998

Map, images and scans

This is a scan of the reproduction of
the above-referred map. You can see the placements of the various flags
here

so-1576, placed in the top of the right page of the
map

ke-1576, in the top of the left page. Yeah, I know,
I "improved" it a little... :-)

tz-1576n, below the above :-)

tz-1576s

mz-1576n, a distinctly Portuguese flag

mz-1576s, another one

za-1576n, just like tz-1576s, only upside down

za-1576s, just like tz-1576n (weird,
no?)

za-1576w, just like mz-1576n

There is yet another flag in the map, which I missed at
the time. It is placed in the Comoros archipelago and is yet another version
of the Portuguese maritime trade flags, a yellow field with five red bezants
disposed per saltire, that is, za-1576w and mz-1576n without the red border
and with the bezants red instead of blue:

km-1576, visible in the map near the left edge of
the right page, vertically centered.